Earlier this week it was announced that my church, Good News Church (St. Augustine, FL), is meeting in-person tomorrow, Sunday, May 10th.
I was torn.
On one hand, I was overjoyed. After all, this is my first chance to rock my seersucker blazer! But a part of me, perhaps a bigger part than I realized, was sad.
We are hard-wired by our triune God to be in community with others, and while I’m certainly not Mr. Extrovert, I am relational by nature. I believe the scriptures--it is good to meet; it is good to share smiles and side-hugs, to sing and hear others sing, and to listen to the proclaimed Word. I know this, but let me tell you a little secret:
Those Sundays off were pretty nice.
I went to church in my pajamas for several weeks in a row. And for someone who works at a church and is typically “on” every Sunday morning, that was quite the luxury.
And there were other things I loved about quarantine.
I took approximately 8 million walks with my wife. We even jogged a few times. I hate running, but the wifey makes everything more bearable. While the exercise was nice, the company is what made those walks special.
For as much fun as I have coaching my kids in rec league basketball, those suddenly-free Saturday mornings were a gift.
Our family of four took picnics at the fort downtown, completed woodworking projects in the garage, and watched Lego Masters and rejoiced when the right team won. We put up a tent in the backyard, gathered around backyard fires nearly every night and ate far too many smores.
One Sunday morning we went to the beach at sunrise with a few other families. We sang and threw shells in the ocean.
I slept in occasionally. I reconnected with college teammates and laughed hysterically over Zoom calls. I discovered the power and magic of earbuds. I took naps. Everything was s l o w e r .
I read and wrote and read and wrote and read and wrote.
For the last few weeks I’ve been doing a lot of yardwork in our backyard. It’s been a mixture of weed pulling, digging up areas that have been ignored, adding walkways with pavers, moving rocks from forgotten places, and adding garden beds. The area my wife and I are most proud of is a corner with butterfly bushes and succulents and a bottlebrush tree and fresh mulch and things Joanna Gaines would approve of.
I’m calling this corner the Quarantine Patch.
Because as much as I love the way the corner looks now, it took some work to get there. I pulled a lot of weeds, yanked out roots, added new soil and mixed it with the original soil. And then I dumped about six inches of fresh mulch, with false hopes that I won’t see a weed for a year.
I hope it’s this way with our lives post-quarantine:
That my family is able to mix what we loved about the last few months with the good soil of our pre-covid lives. That we say goodbye to the unhealthy rhythms and embrace a slower pace, the “pace of grace,” as Alan Fadling calls it.
My encouragement for you is to take time to identify the weeds and rocks of your quarantine. Separate them from the good, fresh soil, take them to a trash can and never let them back into your garden. And then as you recreate your garden, only put in what you love the most. Take time to cultivate your garden, and before you know it, you will begin to cultivate your soul.
So goodbye, quarantine. You were weird and frustrating. And while I hope to never see you again, I appreciate the gifts you left behind.